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On our third and final day of car hire (that’s renting a car for our fellow Americans) in Tivat, Montenegro for the New Year holiday weekend, we drove around the bay of Kotor and went to a UNESCO World Heritage Site again and walked around in an old medieval fortress town again 1 . Montenegro’s Bay of Kotor looks like a neatly tied bowtie. Or perhaps the three triangles from the inside of a radiation hazard sign. The bowtie description is less disconcerting, so let’s go with that one. Our home base for the holidays was the yacht harbor of Tivat, and in our previous blog we took you down the...

While you, dear readers, were enjoying your New Year Day holiday (or nursing hangovers as the case may be), we were toiling away in the Aegean coast town of Budva, Montenegro for the betterment of travel blogdom. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. You see, the weather--overcast and cold--wasn’t particularly nice on New Year's Day in Montenegro. Where, oh where, is my violin and ladder? Cold and wet is less-than-ideal for visiting a beach resort. But we did it, because we are generous souls. We endured such hardships so that we can report back to you that Budva is a fine place to...

In today’s blog, recent sabbatical travelers Andy and LuAnn of www.wetrotabout.com interview full time nomads Chuck and Lori of www.chuckandlori.com . This is the third and final blog in our series of full time travel versus the gap year, and we hope it helps you in deciding whether to hit the road with no plans to come home or to just take some time off to travel the world. Q. First off Chuck and Lori, tell us a little about yourselves, and tell our readers how we met you guys. Well, as of 2015 we’ve been married 30 years. Just a few years ago we had a very conventional life: jobs, kids, a...

In today’s blog, full time nomads Chuck and Lori of www.chuckandlori.com interview recent gap-year travelers Andy and LuAnn of www.wetrotabout.com . We hope their conversation helps shed some light on the full time versus sabbatical decision. Q. First off Andy and LuAnn, tell us a little about yourselves, and tell our readers how we met you guys. LuAnn is an interior designer and watercolorist at www.LuAnnDunkinson.com , and Andy is a software quality assurance guru, plus a photographer and musician at www.AndyToomey.com . Most people are a something-slash-something else nowadays, aren’t they...

Wanderlust is a serious affliction. It can incite otherwise sane, mature people to sell everything they own and hit the road or to tell their employers they’re taking a year off so they can travel the world. If you have an acute case of wanderlust, you might be asking yourself some life-changing questions. Can I just run away and travel the world for rest of my life? What if I just take a year or so off and do a round-the-world trip? We suspect there are quite a few of you out there grappling with questions like these. Some amount of very exciting long-term travel is in your future, but will...

Most countries only treat political and military leaders as national heroes. But some, like Montenegro, elevate poets to the status of national hero. That’s a romantic notion, isn’t it? High atop Mount Lovćen (LUFF-chin), one of those sharp mountain peaks that create the unique geography of the Bay of Kotor, is the mausoleum of Petar II Petrović-Njegoš. Thankfully he has achieved one-name status in Montenegro and Serbia and is popularly known more simply as Njegoš (pronounced, as best as I can determine, “knee-AY-gohsh”). It’s a monument befitting any national hero whose name would be...

There are likely only two reasons you’d ever be aware of Tivat, Montenegro: 1. You are landing at the Tivat airport on your way to either of the better-known resort towns of Kotor or Budva. 2. You are a stinking-rich Russian oil tycoon with a giant yacht and you want to park it somewhere convenient. Top: Anchor art in Tivat, Montenegro; Bottom: Water feature in Porto Montenegro Tivat (TEA-vat) is a small Aegean coastal village situated on the outer part of the Bay of Kotor. If you look at a map, you’ll see that the Bay of Kotor is distinctly bow tie shaped, with Kotor being on a corner of the...

Sometimes, even as well traveled as we are, we still say, “Damn, we should’ve…” We should’ve spent more time in Dubrovnik. To be fair, we hadn’t planned to spend any time in this medieval walled city by the Aegean. The assumption that we’ll return another day led us to select a week in Split over a week in Dubrovnik. Don’t get us wrong, we enjoyed Split, but after a 1-day schedule gap allowed us to stop over for 1 night, that evening left us wishing we had spent a few more of those Split days in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is one of the top tourist destinations in Europe. It’s certainly one of the...

It seems every new year brings so much more potential and promise than the last. That's why we celebrate it, isn't it? But 2016 looks to be particularly exciting for us. We have 5 months of travel yet to complete, including first-time visits to Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, and Prague, plus another transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2. We have two new businesses that are spinning up (details to come). We're planning to focus our 2nd-half of 2016 travels on the great American South, where we're from. But most importantly, our daughter-in-law is due with our first grandbaby on June 1st, and...

Roman emperor Diocletian retired in 305 and crossed the Aegean to build some fine ruins to retire in. It’s easy to see why Diocles, as his friends called him (really), liked this spot on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea. It’s a beautifully picturesque spot ringed with mountains and sheltered from the open sea by islands rising tall from the azure blue waters. His sprawling complex, as much fortress as retirement palace, must have been an impressive sight when it was new. Even as “ruins” today it’s impressive. Split shares tourist prominence on a par with Dubrovnik, Croatia’s other famous...